A commentary on digital photography news and practice based on my ongoing photo magazine coverage of the industry and photographer community since 1975.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

CREATIVE SPACES???

The technology news reported recently that the Apple Mac OS will have a new and different kind of Photo App next year with the next version of the Apple OS. Everyone reading this news, which at best is sketchy, has been very critical. Is it that they will miss iPhoto and Aperture, or is it just people don’t like the idea of change and having to learn something new and different?

But don’t blame Apple for making this change you may be apprehensive of, the real culprit is Intel. What they have done is make the next generation of processing chips which combine both CPU and GPU processing functions int an open environment. No longer will graphics be dependent on a separated processor function with all the inherent limitations of Open GL. Exactly how this will work with photographic functions has not been detailed in any understandable manner, Just generalizations as I have repeated. But you can be sure if Apple will be using this new processor with combined CPU.GPU processing, Microsoft will be offering new operating systems and some very different PC configurations will follow shortly.

Sadly a lot of the comments on this news were worries and concerns photographers would be pushed into switching to Lightroom or some version of Photoshop, and there present workflow is threatened. Sadly they are not aware there have always been very advantageous additional options I have been writing about for some time now, including the easy automated Organic Imaging 2.0; as well as the many versions of Lasersoft Imaging SilverFast software for all aspects of image editing and organizing. These two will also be able to take advantage of the new processing facilities of Intel chips making their advantages even more attractive very likely.

Hold fire, don’t abandon ship or decide you will have to make changes, the rats have not left the ship yet. So let’s all wait and see and maybe the future will look a lot different knowing what will actually be once this new Intel capability is made real in software that will be available next year.